I feel compelled to give some concluding remarks after the past year’s wonderful ordeal that was Deus Ultionis. My mind is flooding over, and I have done my best to mention what I consider to be the most important themes of the campaign, but I have surely left out much. Feel free to leave a comment on anything about the campaign, and I’ll reply with my thoughts.
Themes
Deus Ultionis was a story with many duals (Destiny Force & Destroyer; Gaia & Emmanuel; light & dark; universe & antiverse; Divine Grammar & Divine Calculus), but even more so it was one of threes: Brahma (Destiny Force), Shiva (Destroyer) & Vishnu (Caretaker); Caretaker, Lilith & Glaurung; three parts of the Divine Grammar; three parts of the Divine Calculus; three pieces of the Occultem Lapidem; three parties; and three major themes:
- free will versus predetermination (the inescapability of fate)
- necessary sacrifice versus unnecessary suffering
- moral relativism versus nobility, innocence and good intentions
Those themes (or at least my take on them) are far darker than even the ones from Pax Artificium, and they are very close to my heart. I know that not all of you are as affected by them as I am, but one of my goals was to share the depth and extent of my feeling regarding them. I am honestly moved to tears when I dwell on how many died (willing and otherwise) to save everyone else, and how many were really necessary to do so. Did Glaurung really need to sacrifice himself to protect the Destiny Force for those few critical moments? Was the Caretaker truly justified, even given its vast knowledge, in turning a blind eye when Harry Bryant orchestrated the mass murder of those on Mercury, and in the Syndicate on Earth? Could there have been another way, or were things merely fated to turn out as they did, as the characters struggled futilely against unavoidable events?
One perspective on fate in the campaign is that the GMs had a story they wanted to tell, and manipulated events to match that story. The players moved their characters in such a way that the story was changed to an extent, but there were certainly events beyond their control. One could consider the will of the GMs (and to a lesser extent the players) to be “fate” as we wove a story around our characters from which they could not escape. And the fluctuation in space-time directly corresponding to out-of-game discrepancies was not just a useful out-of-game function (though it was, incredibly), it was also deeply representative of the link between the out-of-game storytelling and in-game fate. To “escape fate,” a character would have to gain the authority to tell its own story—it would have to move from an imaginary construct to a real-world being (much as the Stairway to Heaven incarnated the celestials from Emmanuel’s mind into the campaign’s real world).
Names
Why “Deus Ultionis”? It means “vengeful god.” The name describes the Destroyer’s eternal thirst for vengeance against the universe itself, but also (from some perspective) it describes fate. How could God write a fate so terrible for so many who seem to have done nothing to deserve it? And how could God write a fate so pleasant for many who have flouted the Terran moral infrastructure at every opportunity, for their own selfish gain at others’ expense? Could such a god truly be the omnibenevolent creator assumed by so many?
Why “Pax Artificium”? It means “artificial peace.” It is a pun, because “artificial” means “crafted by man,” which the city of Pax Artificium of course was, and the term implies a triumph of man over nature—but “artificial” also means “false” or “not genuine,” as well as “unnatural,” putting the city in conflict with Gaia. The peace symbolized by the city was thus both a peace forged by mankind, and also a false, short-lived and misleading one.
Characters
Each player has had (and for many, still has) a story to tell with his character. But so did I, and I hope my stories have not conflicted with theirs. To be totally honest, some characters were easier for me to think about than others. There were some around whom the story was woven from its inception (Brice—I told Andy his character would be a main character whether he liked it or not, since he’d managed to be a supporting or secondary character in every campaign we’d participated in together). Some fit in extraordinarily well with my plans and goals (Noun, Nikolai, Rae, V, Malcolm). Others had stories so extraordinary that they had a profound impact on the shape of my own (Max, DEE). Some characters were harder for me, and I had to think carefully to integrate them, but I found the results rewarding (Fey, Trenton, Zee, Ariona, Laiden). Some I did my best to involve whenever possible, but was not always satisfied with my efforts (Andrew, Unity, Matt, Vadril, Ridge, Rae, Adam). And there were some whose stories intrigued me but were sadly never told in full (Ian Thorpe, HEP). I wish I had time to write about each character in depth, including many of the NPCs, but the hour grows late. Instead, I will simply say (for now) that I hope the players are satisfied with their characters’ stories, even though some of them are terrible, tragic or otherwise dark.
Concluding remarks
As for Jasmine & Brice—what happened to them? Brice pulled Jasmine through the portal, and they were gone. Were they obliterated when the Destroyer, saturated with anti-mystic energy, exploded in a galaxy far, far away? Perhaps. But I like to think they could have moved on to another place, somewhere untouched by fate, where they can both be happy. Maybe somewhere (and somewhen) in this world, they have emerged from fiction into reality.
It’s a beautiful dream, but to believe it would defy all reason—not unlike Malcolm’s steadfast belief in a God, despite everything he learned to the contrary as events unfolded, and despite such a being’s allowance of such dreadful and seemingly unjust suffering in the world. It’s hard to accept that some people know nothing but hardship, while others live their entire lives without wanting for anything. Still, maybe Jasmine had it backwards—good things don’t exist solely to be taken away, but rather terrible things happen so that the good things are precious.
“Inventing a god to do the creating only leaves open the question of where that god came from.”
—Richard Carrier